"I will not get myself into a big pot. I will not get myself into a big pot."

Final story from tonight's session at the Palms.

Standard etiquette in poker is that after you have won a large pot (particularly after you take all of an opponent's chips), you shouldn't "take the money and run." It is considered sportsmanlike to stay for a decent amount of time. This is to give the guy a chance to win some of his money back--or at least give the appearance that you are doing so.

I put that latter condition in because it's pretty easy to sit there for an hour and fold every hand, in which case you're not really putting your winnings at stake. If that's all you're going to do, then it's actually better to just run off, because you're filling a seat that could be occupied by somebody who is going to play.

I've arbitrarily settled on 30 minutes as a decent amount of time. It doesn't seem like I'm running off with the loot. During that time, I'm seeing light at the end of the tunnel, a high likelihood that I'm going to end the session with a nice profit. At the same time, though, I recognize that it's a pointless sham to do nothing but fold for the sake of a show of politeness, so I really do play--I just tighten up quite a bit.

During those tail ends of sessions, I want to avoid big confrontations. That's because on a few occasions I've been within a few minutes of banking a nice win for the day, then got stuck in aces-versus-kings, or some other nightmare, couldn't extract myself, and saw the "W" turn into a big fat "L." That's so demoralizing that it's hard to continue to play my A-game after it happens, and I just have to suck up the loss, go home, and feel sorry for myself. I hate that.

So I play, but play tightly and conservatively, more ready to reliquish pots that I would normally contest, never bluffing, etc. I keep a mental image of myself as a bad little boy back in grade school, made to stay after school and write 100 times on the chalkboard, "I will not get myself into a big pot. I will not get myself into a big pot."

Nevertheless, it happens sometimes. Tonight was one of those.

I was up by about $200, which is not huge, but is a perfectly acceptable take for what had been about five hours of playing. Mentally I had basically closed out the session after the last large pot that got me to that point. I put myself into "I will not get myself into a big pot" mode, planning to play only the most premium, favorable situations until it was time to stop.

And then it happened.

I picked up pocket queens in the small blind.* A highly loose-aggressive player in early position put in a raise to $12, and the guy to my right called. Surely I have them both beat, I thought. The raiser is known to raise with anything from any position, and the guy on the button is probably calling with a weakish hand just because he will have position in case he flops big. And surely, I thought, they will both fold to a large reraise, because they both know that I've been playing very solidly. So, I told myself, this isn't really getting into a big pot, because it's going to end as soon as I make a bet.

Yeah, right.

They both called my reraise to $50. Uh-oh. This doesn't feel good.

The flop was 10-6-3 rainbow, which is about as good as it gets for pocket queens. I push $100 forward. This will take it down, I told myself.

Yeah, right.

The first guy immediately moves all-in for about $150. The guy to my right thinks for a while, but then says, "OK, I'm all-in, too." He has about the same amount.

So now there is about $550 in this pot, and it only costs me about $50 more to call their all-in raises and see the turn and river. That's about 11:1 pot odds. Hell, even if all I was holding was a 7-2 offsuit, the math would compel me to call in that situation. I knew it was a mandatory call (mandatory, that is, in the strategic, smart-play sense, not actually mandatory by the rules), but I felt like throwing up. This was exactly what I had been trying to avoid, and yet here I had gotten sucked into it, one step at a time, each step looking (falsely) like it should be all I had to do.

I could see my immediate future looming: One of my opponents must have flopped a set (three of a kind), and the other had some sort of weird combination backdoor flush and straight draw that seemed worth chasing, and would probably get there, leaving me with the worst of three hands, and decimate my carefully-accumulated stack of chips. Ugh. Scotty, beam me out of here! Can we get Superman to fly super-fast around the world to change its direction of rotation and turn back time? (I saw that in a movie once, so I know it's possible.)

I flipped over my queens, and was indescribably relieved to see that the original raiser had pocket jacks. One down, one to go. The second guy had just a suited A-10 for top pair to the board. Neither of them improved, and I took down the biggest pot of the night--one of those lovely things that takes the next three or four hands to get stacked up nicely.

I went back into "I will not get myself into a big pot" mode. And I didn't, thereafter. But surprisingly, I kept running into favorable situations where I could risk a small amount to potentially win a large amount, and several of them paid off. I kept wanting to leave, but couldn't put together 30 consecutive minutes without taking a pot that was big enough to warrant resetting my "give them a chance to win it back" clock. It was a strange but delightful run of good luck. I was also by then playing with the advantage of the biggest chip stack at the table, so that even if some disaster struck, nobody could knock my profit down to less than, say, $200 or so (at least not with one pot).

I finally found a time in which I could leave without being impolite, and ended up having had the biggest cash-game win since early August (which is when this remarkable night occurred: http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/warning-do-not-try-this-at-home.html).

Whew!


*Remarkably, I had queens eight times in this seven-hour session. They won the pot seven of those times. I had aces once, raised, and got no callers. Never had kings or jacks. That's a very weird distribution of hands, and an incredibly favorable outcome for them.

Poker Grump, master sports handicapper

I claim to have the highest winning percentage of any sports bettor in history.

I know next to nothing about sports, a level of knowledge that exactly matches my interest in the subject. Following Warren Buffet's advice about investing in what you know, I have never previously bet on the outcome of a sporting event.

That changed this week. I finally signed up for a Planet Hollywood player's club card. I didn't bother with one before, because PH is one of the few places that don't track poker players' hours and/or reward them with comps. But I decided that my card collection was woefully deficient, so Wednesday I stopped by the "A-List" club and got myself one. (It's another one with the hole in the wrong spot -- see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/casino-club-cards.html -- so I had to punch another one in it when I got home. So annoying.)

Along with the card they gave me two gambling coupons. The first was an added $25 payout to a win at any even-money bet of $25 or more on a table game. So I headed to the first roulette table I saw. I was going to bet on black, but another player put out several chips on the black spot just before I reached for it. I didn't want to crowd the spot and confuse things, and I really didn't care where I put the money, so I took red instead. And we have a winner! 12, red. I get paid $75 for my bet of $25 and the coupon.

The other coupon was for an extra $5 on a sports bet of $5 or more. Never having placed a sports bet before, I didn't know the procedures--like what to say to the guy behind the counter. That made the whole business a little intimidating, so I took a couple of days to think about it. I was back at PH last night (Friday), and decided to give it a go. After all, any straight bet is close to a 50/50 proposition, but with a nearly 4:1 payoff. Like the coupon-enhanced table-game bet, this was a +EV situation. I'm not a gambler at heart, but this is basically free money.

College basketball seemed an easy way to go. I pulled a list of the weekend games from PH's rack of betting information. I quickly settled on Minnesota, up against Wisconsin. This was based on an intensive study of the players, the records, scouting reports, injury lists, statistical analysis of recent trends.... OK, I'm lying. I moved here from Minnesota, and that seemed like good enough reason. Also, a friend of mine is the Gophers' team physician. If that isn't a clear sign from the gambling gods as to where to put my money, I don't know what is.

I gave the guy at the counter my $5 and my coupon. I may have detected a hint of disdain in his tone and facial expression. If so, I suppose that's because this was, like, the biggest bet he had ever had to be responsible for, and he was feeling the pressure to get it written up correctly. But I ended up with my ticket, Minnesota +10.

Today after I get up and showered and got dressed, I click into Yahoo Sports to see what happened. (You see, we big-time sports bettors can't be bothered with wasting time to actually watch the games.) And there it is: Wisconsin 65, Minnesota 56, a 9-point difference. The Gophers beat the spread by 1! Woohoo! My ticket says I will get paid $19.05 for my $5 investment.

And so I now retire from my career in sports betting, with a perfect 100% track record, with a lifetime payout of nearly 400% of my lifetime bets placed.

I am a legend.

An ethical dilemma (non-grumpy content)

Last night I played a hand at the Riviera while knowing what my opponent held. It was an extremely strange sensation. How it happened requires some fairly boring background explanation.

Many of the sleazier poker rooms (and the Riviera fits that description) scrimp way too much on putting replacement decks of cards into use. The uniform pattern on the backs of cards gradually starts wearing off in places, leaving tell-tale pale spots in the design. Often, there are so many cards affected in this way, and the marks are so hard to distinguish from each other, that it would take great concentration and effort to learn which spot went with which card. But sometimes one of the marks is fairly distinct in shape or location, and an observant player can quickly learn to identify that card.

Naturally, I consider it unethical to continue playing with such a card in the deck, once I'm confident I can spot it in an opponent's hand. I alert the dealer to the problem and get that card (or the whole deck) replaced.

One of the first times I did this, I was embarrassed to be wrong. As the card I had noted was mucked by another player, I said to the dealer what has become my standard line: "You should peek at that card. If it's the four of hearts (or whatever), you should probably replace it." I had been right all three times or so that I had noted such a problem before. But on that occasion, I was wrong for the first time. It turned out that that deck had two or three cards all with similar marks.

As a result, I tightened up my standards. My method now is that when I see what appears to be a distinctive worn patch, and learn what card it is associated with, I have to correctly spot that card twice before I alert the dealer to it. For example, if I get dealt the card and correctly identify it to myself before peeking at it, that's one. If I see it coming off of the deck as one of the flop cards, and the card I've named to myself is indeed on the flop, that's two. Then I feel ready to alert the dealer the next time there's an opportunity.

Even then, I still want the dealer to do the final test. It's far more convincing that there's a problem if I point to a card in the muck and name it for the dealer, than if I point to a spot on a card that the dealer knows that I've seen (e.g., one from the flop or one of my own hole cards). So even after I've passed my double test, often quite a bit of time passes before I get the chance to see the card in a situation where the dealer will know that the only way I could name it is from recognizing the back (usually when another player folds his hand, and I see the mark as the card is being pulled into the muck).

The reason for this final demonstration is that on a previous occasion when I didn't prove my secret knoweldge, but just pointed to the tell-tale spot on a card from my hand, the dealer waved it off, saying, "Oh, lots of the cards have little marks like that."

Before last night, I had never contemplated the dilemma that I would face if I found myself in a hand with an opponent who was holding the card I had confidently identified, but had not yet had the chance to reveal to the dealer. So of course, since I hadn't thought about how to handle the situation, the poker gods foisted it upon me.

On one of my very first hands of the session, I noticed an unusual mark on a card in the muck. The Kem card pattern was one of tiny overlapping circles. There isn't a straight line anywhere in the design. But this wear mark was perfectly linear, which is why it caught my eye. It was a long, long time before that card was dealt to me, and I learned that it was the nine of spades. But having been burned once, I was aware that there might be two or more cards with similar features, and I couldn't be sure. So I waited until it was dealt to me again. Yep--nine of spades again. That's almost surely a unique mark, and I'm ready to point it out to the dealer next time I see it in a situation where he or she will know that I didn't see the face of the card.

Then the problem hand developed. I was in the five seat, and looked down at the ace and jack of spades. I raised. I got only one caller, an older man in the one seat, who was in the big blind. He didn't use a card protector, and as he tossed in the chips to call, I saw, to my consternation, that his top card was the marked one. I now knew that he had the nine of spades.

This was an eerie feeling, one that I've never had before. Instead of mentally constructing a list of the possible range of hands with which he would have called me in that situation, I knew one of his cards for sure, and could place extremely tight boundaries on what the other card must be. He might have an unsuited ace-nine (had to be unsuited because I had the ace of spades), he might have pocket nines, and he might have suited connectors, with the eight or ten of spades as his second card. Those were really the only possibilities for his call, given that he was a tight player, that he knew me to be a tight player, and that he was willing to play the hand against me from out of position.

It's hard to describe how incredibly useful this kind of information is.

The flop was J-4-5, with one spade. I had top pair, top kicker. He checked to me. Naturally I'm going to bet here, even if I have no idea what he's holding, but I would usually be doing so with a cautious eye to the possibility that he had flopped a set and was slow-playing it, or had a big pocket pair with which he was preparing to sandbag me. Here, though, that wasn't possible. Of the narrow range of hands listed above, the best he could have at this point was pocket nines, which were way behind my jacks. He could not have a flush draw or a straight draw. He could not have a higher pair.

I bet with a higher degree of confidence than I can recall ever previously having on the flop (short of holding the absolute nuts). It was spooky. I suddenly had an inkling of how the infamous Potripper must have felt playing on Absolute Poker last year. (He's the guy who had insider access so that he could see all of his opponents' cards while he played. Poker is a remarkably easy game when you can do that.)

I was fidgeting, though, and unsure of what to do. I wasn't cheating, of course. I hadn't marked the card. I hadn't peeked at it when it wasn't mine to see. I had only used information that was freely available to anybody at the table who cared to pay attention to it. Furthermore, I hadn't intentionally withheld my knowledge of this one card--I just hadn't yet had the opportunity to disclose my knowledge of it in the way that I have developed, in good faith, as my custom.

If this guy had called my bet on the flop, I was thinking that I should probably stop the action and tell him what an advantage I had, and let the dealer and floor figure out what to do about it.

Fortunately, I was saved the decision of whether to actually do that, because he folded. And yes, I did seize the moment, as he slid his cards toward the dealer, to tell the dealer, "Check his top card. If it's the nine of spades, you need to replace it." My opponent looked as if I had just performed an astonishing magic trick. "How did you know that?" I pointed out the spot. He turned over both cards. The other one was the nine of diamonds. Bingo.

Now my problem is what procedure to use to balance being highly confident that I have, in fact, identified a unique mark, against being again put in the awkward position of playing against an opponent when I have such a huge unfair advantage. It's a problem I haven't solved yet.



Note above, please, that the Riviera is another casino with a huge assortment of lovely chips for collectors. (Click on the photo for a magnified view.) I especially like that they issue chips for conventions that they host, which produces some really unexpected ones. My favorites from this batch, though, are the Easter one in the center and the Halloween one in the lower right corner.


Addendum, February 4, 2008

Yesterday I was playing at Boulder Station. Twice in a fairly short interval I was dealt the five of clubs, which I noted had a small mark on the back. Given my story above, I decided to lower my threshold for pointing out the problem to the dealer, so instead of waiting for a second confirmatory instance of identifying the card from the mark, I used just one (i.e., the second time it was dealt to me, I correctly suspected it was the 5c before I turned it over). The next time I saw what appeared to be the same mark on a card in the muck, I had the dealer check it. It was the deuce of clubs, not the five. *D'oh!* So I'm still unsure how to get to a position of confidence that a mark is unique and therefore especially problematic without risking putting myself in an ethical quandary again.

Interesting new hold'em variation (non-grumpy content)

A new variation of Texas Hold'em, called "Royal Hold'em," is starting its official, legal trial period today at the Hard Rock casino. Play is the same, but the deck is stripped down to 20 cards, the ten through ace of each suit. See for details: http://www.allvegaspoker.com/forum/viewtopic.php?t=3955&postdays=0&postorder=asc&start=0

You can play it online for free at the sponsoring company's official web site: http://www.newpoker.com/ (I hate web sites that start playing cheesy music automatically if your computer speakers are on. The music here sounds like it could be from a porno flick. Ugh!)

That thread and this article, http://www.lowlimitholdem.com/articles/royal_holdem.htm, have hashed out the basic strategy and relevant probabilities. The reduced deck results in some weird facts:

*The only possible flush is a royal flush.

*A straight can only be the nuts if it's on the board, with no flush possible.

*The worst possible hand you can have at a showdown is two pairs.

*If you flop a straight, you are drawing nearly dead.

*Most common winning hand is a full house.

In any new poker variation, figuring out the basic strategy before the competition does is the key to winning. Having read what's available, I may need to head over to the Hard Rock tonight to see if this gives me a profitable edge over those just passing by who decide to try it out. Of course, if the game is populated by the readers of allvegaspoker.com, I'm screwed!

News flash: Grump hits a one-outer on the river

This is an unprecedented event for me.

Palms casino tonight. I have pocket 5s and call a pre-flop raise, as does one other guy. Three of us see the flop of K-10-5 rainbow. One opponent and I quickly raise and reraise each other all-in. He has pocket 10s. Ouch! Set over set is a rare bird. (I think I've been on one side of it or the other maybe four times in the year and a half since moving here.) It's one of the most dreaded scenarios in no-limit hold'em, because it's nearly impossible not to go broke when you've got the bottom end of it, as I did. I did not even have any runner-runner straight or flush possibilities.

The turn card was another king, giving us both full houses, mine the lower one. There was only one card in the deck that could save me--a bit over 2% chance.

Well, I've already announced the end of the story: I got there. I not only raked in a huge pot, but picked up the Palms's $50 four-of-a-kind bonus on top of it.

I might ordinarily label this post with "non-grumpy content" in the title. However, that would not be entirely true, as somebody at that table got quite grumpy indeed. I'm not naming any names, but it wasn't me.

To the best of my recollection, I have never before been in a situation in which I had just one possible card that could come on the river for me to win, and hit it. I hope it's a good, long time before I get my money in that bad again and need such a miraculous save. I'm not sure the poker gods bestow such gifts more than once in one's lifetime.

I snapped the photo above with my cell phone while we were waiting for security to OK the bonus (they have to check the surveillance camera to make sure they have captured a view of everything that happened, in case there is later a question about the legitimacy of the hand). But the dealer was just about to sweep everything away, so the combination of the motion of his hands and mine, rushing to get the shot, made the picture too blurry to really see anything. With a little imagination, though, you can see my pocket 5s in the foreground, the two other fives on the board pushed away from the dealer, and the two kings. The cards on the black shuffler are my opponent's 10s.

Although it seems hard to believe at first glance, this is not the most improbable beat I have ever inflicted on another player. That one remaining 5 in the deck gave me about a 4% chance to win when the money went in. But on another occasion I hit a 3% likely outcome with runner-runner full house to beat two opponents who had flopped flushes (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/04/crazy-night-of-poker-non-grumpy-content.html), and in another case, I got it all in on the flop as a 98.4%/1.6% underdog (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/08/unlikely-events-non-grumpy-content.html), again hitting runner-runner full house. (That perversely sounds like bragging; it's not meant as such.) On the bad end of things was a bluffing opponent hitting runner-runner straight to match my made straight, splitting the pot, which had been 99.1% likely to be mine alone (see http://pokergrump.blogspot.com/2007/12/poker-gods-show-their-displeasure.html).

So it all kind of evens out in the long run, I suppose. But don't try telling that to the guy who had the 10s tonight--he might snap your head off.

If this hand had played out in an online poker room, some players would almost certainly see it as proof positive that online poker is rigged. They might run off and never come back, posting the hand history all over the forums, and demanding an investigation. Those players just have no clue how frequently bizarre, freakish improbabilities will hit when a brick-and-mortar card room deals out several thousand hands a day. It's just the way this game is, whether played at the Palms or on Party Poker.


Bonus story

Other poker bloggers might tell you just one remarkably improbable tale, make a post of it, and call it a night. Not me. Nosirree. You're getting a BONUS story thrown in for no additional cost!

Same Palms session tonight. I was one off the button and had been card-dead for a while, so decided to raise with 10-9 offsuit and just see what happened. When one has been playing tight, either by choice or by being dealt no playable cards, one can basically play any two cards as if they're a big hand. Often just a continuation bet will win the pot from a scared opponent, and sometimes you hit a flop in a way that nobody could guess. I was hoping for one of those two outcomes.

One of the blinds and two previous limpers called.

Flop: A-K-K. Action is check-check-check, and I join the table-tappers, since that flop has convinced me this is not a good spot for a bluff/continuation bet, lest I be check-raised out of my shorts. I'm not putting another penny into this pot. Period. I just know that somebody flopped a monster there, and is waiting for me to step into the trap. I politely decline so to step.

Turn: A (now with four different suits on board). Action: checkcheckcheckcheck.

River: 2. Action: checkcheckcheckcheck.

I get to show last (for which I'm grateful, so I can muck my loser while retaining some dignity). I am astonished when my three opponents roll over, in order, pocket 7s, pocket 5s, and pocket 4s. Their pairs are all counterfeited by the double-paired board. (For those not familiar with the lingo, this means that their best five-card poker hands no longer include the pairs they started with; their hands are AAKK7, AAKK5, and AAKK4, respectively.) My 10 plays! (I.e., I have AAKK10, for the winner.) I turn it over and join everybody else in a good laugh at the improbability of it all.

Then I rake in the chips, patting myself on the back for being such a genius at this game. Anybody can win when dealt aces, but beating three opponents with a 10-9 offsuit, now that takes real skill!

Are longer sessions better or worse? (Non-grumpy content)

In late 2006, Card Player columnist Steve Zolotow wrote an interesting series of pieces on the importance of record-keeping in poker. (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3.) I had already been keeping records adequate for tax documentation, but his writings prompted me to refine my spreadsheets (how did the world get by before there was Excel???).

But for some reason, I never got around to doing the first analysis that Zolotow recommends, which is looking at results by length of session. Well, now I've done it. There's not really any reason anybody should care about the results, but I did the hard work, so I might as well share it.

The first chart above (click to make it bigger) shows data of dollars won/lost versus hours of cash-game play (I excluded tournaments), for the first eight months of 2007; I got tired of entering it after that, and thought that I had a big enough sample.

The first thing you might notice is that there appear to be as many dots in the negative range as the positive. That is so. I've seen and heard other pros say that they book wins something like two-thirds of the time. Well, for whatever reason, that isn't how I run. In fact, I'm at 51%/49% right now. That doesn't bother me, though, because as the chart also shows at a glance, my average win is quite a bit higher than my average loss.

Zolotow advises: "Look at your five biggest wins and five biggest losses. If you played significantly more hours during those losses than you did during your wins, you have a major discipline problem. If you perform this simple exercise and change your negative pattern, it will be the most important thing you can do to improve your bottom line."

I'm pleased to see that I pass this test. My five biggest wins are in sessions varying from 2.75 to 6.25 hours. My five biggest losses are between 1.75 hours (that was a positively brutal, intense beating that session!) and 4.5 hours.

My sense going into this data analysis was that I would see no significant correlation between length of time played and result. And that basically turns out to be correct. To be precise, the correlation coefficient for the data set shown in the first chart above is 0.16. A correlation coefficient is a way of expressing how related two sets of numbers are. It can range between 1.0 (perfect positive correlation; the data points would line up exactly on a line slanting up and to the right) and -1.0 (the opposite). So I have only a slightly positive tendency for longer sessions to be more profitable.

Next I ran the analysis you see in the second chart. It's the same data set, but with the absolute dollar values converted to dollars-per-hour rates. The correlation here is even weaker: 0.12, which means that I make only marginally more per hour during longer sessions.

You can also see that I don't go for the marathon sessions that some other players make famous. It's not my thing. On those rare occasions that I've gone past the 12-hour mark, I feel crummy and I don't play well. It's just not worth it.

My conclusions:

(1) As I suspected, the hard data confirm that I'm reasonably well disciplined about quitting when things are going badly for me that day. I definitely need to improve in this, because I can't count the number of times I've spewed off one extra buy-in (usually $100) even after I recognize that I'm playing poorly, or the competition has the best of me, or I'm just impossibly unlucky that session, or whatever. I'd love to have back all of the Benjamins that I've lost that way. But at least I can honestly say that I don't let the situation turn from "problem" to "disaster" before getting out of Dodge on the days that the donkeys are having their way with me.

(2) Between roughly two and eight hours, there is basically no correlation between how long I'm sitting at the table and how much I can expect to have made. Some days I get on a huge rush early, then stagnate for a few hours, neither making nor losing anything, until I get up and leave. Other days it's the reverse, and I toil and sweat with no headway, until four or five hours in I get smacked in the face by the deck and run my stack up ridicuously fast. Other times, it's just slow, steady progress. Other times, it's up and down, up and down, and whether I book a win or a loss is just a matter of where the pendulum is when I clock out. It's absolutely impossible to predict, and it appears not to matter.

Play a hand with me

It's pretty rare that I post stuff dealing with strategy and analysis of hands, because, first, there's about a billion other places you can go for those topics, so I have little new and original to contribute. Second, I just think it's usually pretty boring to read about somebody else's poker play. It's a "you had to be there" kind of thing. Besides, if you don't know the author personally, it's hard to care much if he won or lost on a given hand or in a given session.

But I've been musing today on a hand that I played last night in a $1-2 no-limit hold'em game at Harrah's, one that required more thought and finesse than usual, and I think maybe some readers might learn something from it. I'll warn you in advance, though, that it's going to take a lot of words to explain what on the surface was a pretty straightforward hand of cards, because all of the interesting stuff was going on below the surface. This is a hand that would have been totally different if played online. In fact, it illustrates perfectly, in large part, why I'm so much more successful playing in casinos than I am on the Internet.

When Greg Raymer won the main event of the World Series of Poker in 2004, he had to deal with the usual nay-sayers calling him a luckbox, and put up with critiques of some plays that seemed, well, a little crazy. But then ESPN did a special show where he got to comment on what he was doing, play by play, and it was eye-opening: The guy is very smart, highly analytical, and always, always, always, had a thoughtful, intelligent rationale for doing what he did. It was an impressive performance. (Had I been a follower of the http://www.twoplustwo.com/ forums, I would have already known that he had, long before the WSOP win, distinguished himself as a first-rate hand analyst.) I hope to do something similar here, in microcosm, because there is so vastly much more going on in poker than who has what cards, and this hand shows that abundantly, I think.

The nature of the opponent is absolutely crucial here. She is a classic tight-weak player, meaning that she plays very few hands, doesn't bet them strongly when she has them, and seems to be easier than average to intimidate. To make matters worse for her, she's playing in a seat next to a girlfriend, and they're openly commenting on the action as hands play out (not to the point of actually violating rules, but just things like "Wow," and "oooo" and "uh-oh" when unexpected things happen). In other words, she's spinning off loads of extra information about whether she likes the situation or not.

Conversely, I've been lucky enough to establish a highly tight-aggressive image, not showing any of my bluffs, showing down only strong hands, and making good laydowns when beat, all of which adds up to the table seeing my bets and raises as deserving healthy respect. It's just the way I like it.

I have only tangled with this young woman in one pot before. She folded to my raise on the river, and I showed her that I had made the nut straight on the turn and had trapped her for that last river bet. I have no doubt that that memory will influence how she plays against me in the future.

These facts are critical, because I'm about to do something unorthodox, and wouldn't attempt it without those circumstances having set it up.

I limp in from early position with Q-10 of hearts. It's not a hand I'm thrilled with, and I won't take much heat with it, but it does have potential. Ms. Tight-Weak raises to $10, which is a pretty standard opening raise for this table. Everybody else folds.

Normally I would fold here, too, and with good reason. As Dan Harrington points out in his essential treatise on tournament hold'em, you have four weapons at your disposal: your cards, your chip stack, position, and table image. You don't need to have all four of them going for you in any hand, but it's unwise to go into battle without at least two of them on your side.

Here I have only one: table image. I'm out of position. She has a few more chips than I do. And given the narrow range of hands with which she has been raising, she almost certainly is starting off with stronger cards.

It is terribly arrogant of me to think that I can outplay an opponent without the advantage of position, without an intimidating stack of chips, and with a weaker hand. It's really rare that I would attempt it. But, as I hope I have adequately established above, the peculiar mix of factors here seems just right that I might be able to negotiate an unusually dangerous situation. At the very least, I believe that it will be easy to determine if I'm beat and get away from the hand without too much loss.

So I call her raise, and we see the flop of K-Q-2 rainbow. I check. She bets $20. I think she probably has either pocket aces or a king with a strong kicker to bet into me here, and if she had aces, she likely would have raised more before the flop. But I decide to call, mostly to see what she does with the turn card, in the hope that a steal opportunity will present itself. Lots of players like her will fire on the flop, but not have the heart to keep betting if they are called. In her case, this could be because the flop missed her (e.g., she has pocket 10s or jacks, and really didn't like the flop, but was willing to take one shot at it), or because the flop helped her, but she's worried about being trapped by me slow-playing something like two pair or a flopped set of deuces. In addition to all of that, having made second pair here gives me outs even if she has the king; a 10 or another Q will likely give me a better hand.

The turn card is an offsuit 6. I like this, because there are no flush draws to complicate the analysis. It's possible that she has a straight draw with A-J, but it's only a one-way if so, and I really don't think she's the type to have bet just a draw. If she had J-10 for the open-ended straight draw, I think she would have just limped in before the flop.

On the other hand, the turn card obviously didn't help me. I'm going to check, and basically if she fires again, I'm bailing out.

At least, that's the plan.

But then she does something unexpected: she bets $20 again. A larger bet, and I'm convinced she has a king, I'm beat, and I'm outta there. But repeating, rather than increasing, a bet size on a later street is a tight-weak player's classic scream of fear. My assessment of her is that she has sufficient experience to overcome her fear if she had two pair (especially king-queen here) or pocket kings or queens for a flopped set, and she would be confident enough of her hand to bet strongly. On the other hand, if she had missed completely, I think she wouldn't be putting in another bet at all. That means that I can narrow down her hand possibilities with almost laser-like precision: She has A-K, K-J, or A-Q. Nothing else fits the pattern here.

Repeating the same bet size after the pot has grown larger isn't quite raising the white flag of surrender, but it definitely changes my plan. I now think there's a good chance I can steal it from her. So I calmly, quietly, deliberately put two red chips on top of a $50 stack and push it forward--a check-raise, tripling her bet.

She and her friend instantly go into frenzy mode: "Uh-oh." "What did I get myself into?" "What does he have?" I like this. Unless my radar is way, way off, this isn't acting to fake me out with a monster, but is genuine concern on her part. She cuts out the additional $40, moves it back and forth between her hands a bit, looks at what is left of her stacks if she calls and loses this, but then finally puts it in. But she is definitely rattled.

I now believe that I can eliminate A-Q from her range of possible hands, because she wouldn't call a check-raise with second pair. She's just got to have a king for top pair, and most likely A-K to be willing to call my check-raise.

Well, basically I'm done with this hand. I gave it a good try, but it didn't work. I'm beat and I can't push her off of her hand. Time to cut my losses and look for a better spot.

But wait--did the dealer just put out a third queen for me on the river? Why yes, he did! Thank you, Mr. Dealer! I am about as certain as I can be that I now have the best hand. What's more is she can't think that I have a queen, because nobody would be stupid enough to check-raise with second pair (hee hee!). So I move all-in for my last $106.

She again goes into talk-out-loud mode. It takes her at least a full minute, but finally she says, "OK, I call." She then gets the bad news, and shows me her A-K. She crabs a bit with her friend about how lucky I got--which there is no denying. I hit one of five cards that would make me the winner, without which it probably would have gone check-check at the end.

Her mistakes were excessive timidity and transparency. If she had put in closer to a pot-sized bet on the turn, I would have scampered off with my tail between my legs. And consider her call of my check-raise on the turn. She should have thought something like this: "If I call here and he pushes all-in on the river, I'm going to call that. Since I'm going to be willing to risk nearly all my chips anyway, it would be smarter to push now, because if he's just trying to bully me, he might fold, but if I wait until the river and he goes all-in, it will be too late to push back against him, and, besides, that last card might help him. I can't expect my hand to get any better than it already is, so now is the time to make my stand." If she had re-raised me there, again I run away licking my wounds. Her weakness cost her nearly her entire stack.

The transparency cost her money, too, because without making herself so easy to gauge, I would have been concerned that she started with K-Q, flopped two pair, and make a full house on the river. I might have still tried the check-raise (I honestly can't say for sure), but if she had called it without fuss and drama and emotion, I would have been seriously worried that I was beat even after making three queens, and would have checked it down with her, cutting her losses. She virtually allowed me to play as if her cards were face-up on the table, which let me extract maximum value when I got more than a little bit lucky.*

So today's lessons, kids, are these: When you have a good hand, playing it timidly will cost you money. And whatever hand you have, the more you talk and react and scrunch up your face and fiddle with your chips, the easier it will be for an opponent to deduce what you're holding, and adjust his play optimally against you, which will also cost you money. That's not what you want, is it?


*Of course, these things can go the other way, too. Just a few days ago, also at Harrah's, I made the nut straight on the turn, put in a pot-sized bet, and had an opponent move all-in on me with two pair. I called, of course, and he hit one of four cards on the river to make a full house. Nothing you can do about that except roll your eyes and pull out more cash.

A blue moon in your eyes (non-poker content)

About the title of this blog post--you either get it or you don't. You either excitedly thought, "Cool, a post about the Sopranos!" or you thought, "What the hell is 'blue moon in your eyes' about?"

There was a big gaming expo here a month or so ago. The only news from it that caught my attention was the announcement of a Sopranos-themed slot machine. Now, I could easily go the rest of my life without touching a slot machine and not feel the loss. But with the best television show in history now off the air, anything new related to Tony and the gang will get my heart beating a little bit faster. Upon hearing the news, I vowed that I would deviate from my usual abstinence from the slots and give David Chase et al. one dollar of my hard-earned money when I first found one of these beauties.

And tonight it happened. While playing poker at the Silverton, I noticed a banner announcing that the Sopranos slot machines were here. When I was done playing, I went looking for them. As you can (maybe) see from the blurry pictures (some day I have got to upgrade to a phone with a better camera), they are arranged in banks, with a big TV screen overhead. The screen rotates between playing the show's famous opening (the drive from New York to New Jersey, with the song, but without the credits rolling), the current jackpot amounts, and photos of the Soprano crew with quotations.

The machines use mechanical reels rather than video-simulated ones, but don't bother with an arm to pull--just a button to press. In addition to more traditional slot-machine symbols on the reels, there are photos of the main characters, plus a few locations, like Barone Sanitation and Satriale's Meats, that can line up.

As with most modern slots, there is a bewildering variety of ways the symbols can line up in various combinations to win, and if you really want to understand them, you have to crouch down and read about 30 paragraphs of fine print. I didn't bother. I inserted my $1, selected one winning line and ten credits (at $0.01 each) per line, which meant I would get ten shots at winning, for ten cents each. That's me, Mr. Big-time Gambler.

The first seven times I pushed the "spin" button, the only outcome was 10 fewer credits in my bank. But then....

I have no idea what combination I hit. It didn't look particularly special to me, but the machine started going crazy. In addition to racking up some credits, it gave me eight free spins. Unlike any machine I've played before (which admittedly isn't many), however, it started doing the free spins for me right then, just one after another, and it seemed that every one of them was hitting something and adding more credits and more free spins, which it also ran automatically for me. It felt vaguely like watching a nuclear chain-reaction in slow motion, and I was just hoping that it would spit out a "pay" ticket before it went all China Syndrome on me.

This went on for about two minutes. When it finally stopped ringing and dinging and spinning, it showed me having accumulated 430 credits.

Well, I know that this is as good as it's likely to get, so I cashed out my big $4.30 ticket and took it to the cashier's cage for my cash. I was willing to give the gang $1, but when they were nice enough (probably because I've been such a loyal fan of the show) to make me a winner by quadrupling my money, I didn't want to insult their generosity by just losing it back.

So I did what any good "wise guy" would do: I took the money and ran.

Thanks, T!

Once in a while, the game just plays itself

For all the times that poker causes me great weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth, I must admit that there are times it seems like the easiest way in the world to make a living. Tonight was one of those times.

Triple up

I sit down at in a game at South Point, having bought in for my usual starting amount, $100. On my very first hand, I'm in the cutoff seat (one ahead of the button), and look down at the two black jacks. An early-position player raises to $10 and there are five callers. I pop it up to $40 and get four callers. (I was to learn quickly that this was a calling table--it was not easy to shake these people off of a hand.) The flop is K-x-x with two spades. Everybody checks to me.

Well, when you've got jacks, you have to expect that the flop will have at least one overcard, and you just can't be scared of it every time, or you might as well throw the hand away before the flop. There's more than $200 in the pot already, and I have only $60 left, so the only rational action, when nobody else takes a first crack at it, is to go all-in. Even if somebody else has a king, they may figure me to have A-K or A-A, and therefore fold. Only one person calls. I show my hand; he doesn't. The dealer puts out the turn and river. I don't remember what they were, except that the turn was another spade, which I hated. I didn't improve, but I won. I have no idea what that guy called me with, because he mucked it without showing. I had very nearly tripled up on my first hand.

Double up

About 30 minutes later, I'm on the button and see two aces. The first player raises to $15 and four others call before it gets to me. I push it to $50, and get three callers--again, more than $200 in the pot before the flop. This is a rare occurrence, and for it to happen twice in 30 minutes, and to have me be the one pushing the action both of those times is quite extraordinary.

The flop is 9-4-3 rainbow. My opponents check-check-check to me. I have $218 left in front of me. With $200+ in the pot, once again the only sane move is all-in. One guy folds, but the other two insta-call. This worries me, because it sure smells like one of them got stubborn with a pocket pair and hit three-of-a-kind on the flop.

I show my aces. One opponent groans and turns over pocket queens. Whew--that's pretty safe. Then the other guy smacks the table, says, "I don't believe this!" and turns over--the other two queens!

None of us can make a straight or a flush with any cards on the turn and river. Neither of my opponents can improve to three queens, obviously. In other words, I have them both drawing stone dead on the flop!

To have just one pair after the flop and yet have two opponents absolutely dead--unable even to get a split pot--is exceptionally rare. It's not terribly difficult for a flopped straight flush, flopped quads, a flopped full house, a flopped flush, or even a flopped straight to have two opponents drawing dead with two cards yet to come. But a single pair??? It would be really difficult to calculate how often it happens, and I'm not inclined to put in that much effort. But I'll say this: As far as I know, I have never witnessed the situation in which a player holding just one pair after the flop has two opponents stone-cold dead.

The dealer recognized this a bit faster than I did, and raised his hands in a gesture of futility, as if to say, "What's the point of finishing out the hand?" Then he made a funny effort of it, just tossing the turn and river card sort of haphazardly at the table, because by then everybody recognized that it made no difference whatsoever what cards got pulled out.

I started that hand with $268 and finished it with just under $650, more than doubling up. (I had more chips than either of the players that went all-in with me.)

Like I said, sometimes the game just plays itself, and I get to just sit back and stack up the chips.

No two poker hands are the same (non-grumpy content)

For some odd reason, I have lately been wondering whether any two poker hands will ever be exactly the same (assuming a random shuffle; i.e., barring the use of a deck set up deliberately in some way). Once you do the math, it turns out that it isn't even a close question.

Let's just focus on Texas hold'em poker, and assume a ten-handed game. Because we don't care about the order in which the two down cards are dealt, the number of possible starting hands for the first player is given by C(52,2), which is 1326. (For an explanation of this notation, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combinations.) Then there are 50 cards left, so for each of those 1326 possibilities we have C(50,2) starting hands for the second player, which is 1225. Continuing in that fashion, we find that there are 2.99 x 10^29 ways of dealing two cards to each of ten players.

Then we have a flop of three cards out of the remaining 32, and C(32,3)=4960. Finally we multiply by 29 for the number of different turn cards and by another 28 for the number of different river cards, for a grand total of 1.21 x 10^36. (For you math geeks, that's 1.21 undecillion.)

Suppose that we set all six billion people on earth to doing nothing but playing poker. That would be 600,000,000 games going. (We'll let the players deal their own cards, so nobody is left out having to be the full-time dealer.) Suppose we can knock out one hand a minute, because we're all extremely quick. We could get through 3.15 x 10^14 hands per year. In 200 years (approximately the amount of time that poker has existed), we could play 6.31 x 10^16 hands. In 20,000 years (about the amount of time since the last Ice Age), we could have done 6.31 x 10^18 hands. That's a pretty good approximation of the number of grains of sand on the world's beaches (see http://www.hawaii.edu/suremath/jsand.html). But it's only a miniscule fraction of the number of possible hold'em hands. In fact, it would amount to way less than one one-millionth of one one-billionth of the number of possible hands.

And we haven't even considered all of the other forms of poker (Omaha, in which every player is given four cards to begin with, obviously has vastly more potential), or all the extra variations that come by playing with fewer than ten players at a time. And, of course, no two players use identical strategies, so if you combine all of the possible choices that each player has at each point in the hand with the number of hands, I think we might get up to a number comparable to the number of atoms in the universe (which is on the order of 10^80).

In short, it is virtually certain that there have never been two identical hands of poker played in the entire history of the game.

The chess nerds will boast that their game is vastly more complex, because the estimated number of possible chess games is something like 10^120 or maybe 10^123 (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shannon_number). But if they're so smart, why aren't any of them getting rich from their game, huh?

The winds of Las Vegas (non-grumpy, non-poker content)

I was amused by the afternoon television news here, in which the news team was all in a lather about the fact that it had rained today. It wasn't a flash-flood kind of rain, just a slow drizzle, totalling--brace yourself for this--about one-third of an inch. Wow! But they had their full crew out on alert, doing live updates from various places about this incredible breaking weather story. (Yawn.) They even featured a segment reminding people how to drive on wet roads. Coming from Minnesota, I just had to laugh. It would be great fun (a destructive, sadistic sort of fun, that is) to dump about a foot of snow on this city and watch the mayhem that resulted.

Anyway, this reminded me of a little blurb I wrote roughly a year ago for a newspaper back home, about a weather phenomenon that is moderately common here but almost never seen there. Enjoy.

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Las Vegas is a dirty city—in a literal sense. To start with, it’s in a desert, and there’s just dust everywhere. The day after you wash your car, it’s covered in a thin but easily visible layer of dirt again. But additionally, there’s more trash left around than anyplace else I’ve lived. I suppose part of that is the dependence on drunk tourists. But there’s also the fact that vendors shove all sorts of handouts and other crap at passersby on the Strip, much of which just gets dropped and left. Finally, the city appears to spend precious little on such niceties as street sweeping, and nobody seems to care much about open dumping of stuff in vacant lots.

Last week we had a windstorm. I had not previously seen the Strip in this condition, and it was eerily spectacular. There were straight-line winds blowing a constant cloud of dust from the west, and it was like the shiny mega-resorts had been submerged in murky, sandy water. The wind was strong enough to loosen a large sign on the Venetian hotel, causing authorities to shut down the Strip for a while, lest the thing come off completely and do serious damage.

But there were also wonderful dust devils everywhere, filled with more man-made debris than any I’ve seen before. I was immediately and strongly reminded of that strangely beautiful scene in “American Beauty,” in which a young photographer marvels at the elegant randomness of a plastic bag being tossed about by the winds.

Watching plastic bags and papers and other trash being lifted, swirled, buffeted back and forth, then dropped again in a new location, seemed perfectly emblematic of the city. People come here to dance drunkenly, to let themselves be tossed to and fro by the whims of chance, only to collapse in a heap when the winds of fortune and fun inevitably die down. The city has a shockingly high rate of suicide.

If you come here for a visit—and I hope you do—be sure that you remain tethered financially and by friends and family. The winds can be both delightful and destructive.

World record house of cards

The only possible thing to say is "Wow."

http://www.cnn.com/2007/LIVING/11/14/card.stacking/index.html#cnnSTCOther1

Post #200

This is the 200th post in this blog. Quite a milestone.

Thanks for reading. I really mean that. This blog is itty-bitty in the scope of all blogs, averaging about 80 hits a day, but to me it's incredibly exciting and cool that every day that many people get curious about what I'm thinking. It keeps me motivated to ponder new things to say.

Reading level

According to http://www.criticsrant.com/bb/reading_level.aspx, the reading level of this blog is "Elementary school"!

Horrors! If that's accurate, I have not been doing my job! Since I write pretty much as I think, well, I'd hate to confront actual evidence that my thinking is stuck at an elementary-school level.

I'm suspicious of the accuracy of the rating, though. A legal blog that I regularly check, The Volokh Conspiracy (http://www.volokh.com/), where I spotted a link to this readability rating service, only ranked as "junior high" level, even though it's filled with highly technical discussions of academic legal issues. So I'm dubious.

But in an attempt to bump up the average reading level for the entire blog, I hope readers will bear with me as I make the next few entries about things like the search for Higgs bosons in non-Einsteinian condensates, the futility of denominating Emerson as a transcendentalist in light of his post-modern predelictions vis-a-vis the Hegelian dialectic, and the debate over non-Mendelian equilibriums as a mechanism of microevolutionary destabilization in founder populations subject to intrinsic genetic re-randomizations. All as they relate to poker, of course.

Addendum:

I had a hunch, based on how fast the rating web site ran its test, that it was only checking the most recent one or two posts. So, after putting up the foregoing bit of claptrap, I ran the test again, and just that one long sentence managed to push me up into the "junior high" reading level. Progress!

Perchance to dream (non-grumpy content)

I suppose it's inevitable that if one spends a good portion of each day playing, reading about, and thinking about poker, at night one will sometimes dream about it, too. And as with most dream subjects, the result is often weirdly distorted.

Last night I dreamed that I was in a hand with two cards, marked "6" and "12." I was having some difficulty figuring out whether I won or lost to a guy who was holding a 6 and a king.

But even with extra cards, that was a simple game, compared to another one that played out in my addled brain one night. I found myself in a game in which one had to bet on the number of vowels and consonants that would appear in the cards. For example, "eight of hearts" has five vowels and eight consonants. The winner was the one who had most accurately predicted the total number of vowels and consonants in his final five-card hand. It was terribly complicated.

I find that I much prefer a 52-card deck, with pairs and straights and flushes determining the winner. As baffling and frustrating as the game seems at times, it's far simpler than the mutant versions that my twisted subconscious invents in the dead of night.

How to play poker, from the mouths of babes (non-grumpy content)

I played poker not too long ago with a woman who told me about a recent trip to a toy store with her 6-year-old son. He had apparently picked up on parts of the game when his mother watched it on television. In the store they passed a display of sets of poker chips. The boy said, “Mom, I know how to play poker. You push your chips into the middle of the table and say 'all in,' and you win!”

The kid might turn out to be one of the great ones.

Strange night at the Venetian

Halloween in a casino can be surreal. At a minimum, I spotted a caveman, Superman, Dog the Bounty Hunter, Ali G, a cat, a belly dancer, mob enforcers, Ozzie Osbourne, a bumblebee, a Mexican bandito, and a young woman doing a spot-on impersonation of a Venetian cocktail waitress.

OK, she may have been an actual Venetian cocktail waitress. It's hard to tell for sure.

It's the same with all the people dressed as pimps and hos. There's just no telling which of them are in holiday costumes and which are just dressed for work the same as every other day.

Weird.

A poker player tries a different game, and wins (non-grumpy content)

I hadn't done anything with my UltimateBet account in a long time, so decided to see what was happening there. Sometime earlier this year, as it turns out, they added Roshambo (Rock Paper Scissors) to the games you can play. I had to try it out.

I went for the $0.50/match table (match is best of 3 throws). I knew that I would outthink myself and second-guess, third-guess, and fourth-guess myself into utter insanity if I actually tried to analyze what an opponent would throw and then take counter-measures. So instead I opened Excel, did a one-cell spreadsheet of =RANDBETWEEN(1,3), then hit F9 before every throw. This would generate a randomly selected integer between 1 and 3, and I would go with that, no matter what I thought my opponent would do. (After I got tired of switching back and forth between applications, I had Excel print out a list of 1000 of these random digits. It's easier to just run my finger down the page, but the effect is the same.)

24 hours later, I've done surprisingly well. I've made $11 in maybe 3 hours of playing online. Not exactly a huge rate of return, but it's the win rate that has me intrigued more than the dollar income. I've taken on 9 opponents and defeated 8 of them, all in sets of at least 3 matches, to a max of 19 matches.

Unless this is just the good side of variance, I don't get it. Using a truly random strategy, I shouldn't be able to win or lose. In fact, in the long run, I should lose exactly $0.02/match, which is the UB rake on the game. I'm obviously not outplaying my opponents in any meaningful sense, since I'm not even trying to strategize. But it seems to me that it shouldn't matter how "well" or "badly" opponents play, either--they could go for "rock" every single damn time and be able to tie me over the long haul. And, of course, they could have been using the same random strategy, for all I know (although I was quite sure I could pick up patterns against some of them).

What's more is that I'm confident I could have done better by occasionally departing from my random-number list, because there were times when I felt extremely confident what an opponent was about to do, and I was nearly always right in those spots. There was some definite bleed-over from poker habits involved here, because I could figure out what my opponent must be thinking that I was doing, based on what would appear to him/her to be a pattern I was engaged in.

So am I right that this initial success is just an unusually lucky run, or am I missing something? That is, is there some way that an opponent can systematically make his outcome against a random strategy worse than average? If so, I don't see how, but it's not something I've thought about in enough depth to have clear thoughts on yet.

The only things I've read about Roshambo strategy are Rafe Furst's chapter in the Full Tilt Poker Strategy Guide, but that's just about getting inside an opponent's head, which I haven't even been trying very hard to do. I also found a couple of pretty superficial online strategy guides, but haven't looked around enough to see if there are in-depth discussions, though I assume there must be.

For now, I'm pleased to be winning, even if it's only small amounts, and even if it is just dumb luck, because it's fun and a nice diversion from poker.


Addendum, November 11, 2007

Immediately after writing the above, the pendulum of statistical variance turned against me. Since then, I have engaged in 23 contests, ranging from 1 to 31 matches (each match being best of 3 throws), winning 5, tieing 5, and losing 13. Ignoring contests/sessions against particular opponents, and lumping together all of the results since my last post, there were 137 matches, including 62 wins and 75 losses. This is easily within the expected range given by the binomial distribution; a handy online calculator for such things (http://faculty.vassar.edu/lowry/binomialX.html) tells me that a coin flipped 137 times will have an outcome at least this skewed from an exactly even split about 31% of the time. That would have to be at around 5% or less to make me think that there was something other than pure chance operating.

The experiment has sufficiently convinced me of what I suspected before: that playing a random strategy basically yields random results. My initial success was a statistical blip, which has been reversed with the subsequent games. What's more, I've concluded that playing a random strategy is pretty boring, and playing with a non-random strategy is probably only a little less so. I may revisit the game from time to time for a bit of diversion, but I feel like I've pretty much exhausted my interest in it for the foreseeable future.

Today's good news: I am not a complete donkey (non-grumpy content)

I just took the Donkey Test (http://www.donkeytest.com/). I was enough of a sucker that I even paid the $9.95 for the analysis that is pasted in below. It would be far more worthwhile, though, if they provided an explanation of what they considered the correct answers. In a lot of cases, they are close judgment calls, and I'd appreciate a detailed discussion of how they justify one answer being unambiguously the right one.

They also are sorely in need of a copy editor. One of the reasons I was so slow was the horrible spelling, grammar, and punctuation in the questions, even missing words, so that one has to figure out what the sentence is saying or asking by context. That's just inexcusable. Having been an editor in a former life, that sort of thing annoys and distracts me far more than it does most people. I found myself wasting a lot of time mentally proofreading. Fortunately, I don't do this too much during live poker games. (Except when other players say things like "I should have went all-in." It takes all my cognitive energy to suppress the urge to shout, "It's GONE, you pinhead, GONE! Should have GONE all in, not should have WENT all in! Did you fail fourth-grade English???")

Since speed was by far my worst scoring category, I guess you can see one of the big reasons I don't much like playing online! A man needs time to make good decisions.

It correctly pegs me as tight-aggressive, although it's puzzling how I can score what appears to be a perfect 20 on the "tight" and "aggressive" scales, but simultaneously 13/20 and 16/20 on the "loose" and "passive" scales. That seems inherently contradictory.

I think it's correct to single out general logic and ability to interpret betting patterns as among my strengths. I was happy to discover that it didn't identify any horrendously weak areas for me. I wonder how much my score would have improved if I had gone faster, since that's clearly what dragged me down the most.

Overall, I'd have to say that it was a better test than I expected when I started it. Many of the situations described are really, really tough. I hate poker sessions in which I'm repeatedly forced to make such difficult decisions, and being faced with several dozen of them in a row like this is agonizing! (I think this is secretly how the CIA tortures the Guantanamo Bay detainees--compels them to take a brain-twisting poker test, then refuses to tell them which questions they got right or wrong, or why.)



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Poker IQ Score
Your General Poker IQ Score is 124 and shows how skilled you are in general. Anyone with a score this high is considered to be a mid stakes pro. This score is better than 94.52% of all persons taking this test. You should expect to win in mid stakes NL hold'em games and in tournament games.

You scored higher than your average score in 10 individual ability categories. 3 of these better scores could be called statistically significant and may indicate special abilities, or that you were distracted on those parts of the IQ Test that counted more heavily in the other ability categories.

Position
Solving many of the IQ Test's problems required the ability to analyze your position at the table, considering blind levels and stack sizes, the tendencies of your opponents and the strength of your hand.. Many poker situations require analysis of position. The ability to play in and out of position strongly is required for skilled NL Hold"em players.

Your Positional Play score of 126 is not significantly different from your average score. This score is better than 95.85% of all persons taking this test.

Blinds
Understanding what changes occur when out of position but required to put in half a bet are important. By far, the blinds will be any NL Hold"em player's least profitable seats. It is important to play out of the blinds correctly in order to minimize losses over time.

Your Blinds score of 125 is not significantly different from your average score. This score is better than 95.22% of all persons taking this test.

Tournaments
This is the ability to change your strategy, hand strengths, calling and pushing ranges as blinds and antes rise. It is most useful during tournament play, but is useful in dealing with short stacks in deeper stacked cash game play. It is important to learn tournament skills even for cash game specialists. Strong tournament skills should translate to more tournament cashes and deeper finishes.

Your Tournament Play score of 122 is not significantly different from your average score. This score is better than 92.88% of all persons taking this test.

Big Pairs
The ability to play big pairs correctly is important for any successful NL Hold"em player. Although over time big pairs will be the most profitable hands, playing them incorrectly can lead to disastrous results. Beginners get themselves into trouble by slow playing and/or overplaying big pairs, and often try to be excessively tricky with them. Although poor players sometimes play their big pairs correctly, it is rare. In general better players will win more and lose less with JJ+ as they gain skill and experience.

Your Big Pairs score of 109 is significantly lower than your average score. This score is better than 72.57% of all persons taking this test.

Small and Medium Pairs
The ability to play small and medium pairs is typically difficult for beginners. Typically beginners will call too much pre-flop with these hands and overplay overpairs on the flop. Folding a set is rarely correct but sometimes necessary.

Your Small and Medium Pairs score of 107 is significantly lower than your average score. This score is better than 67.96% of all persons taking this test.

Bluffing
Bluffing is big part of NL Hold"em. Bluffing and semi-bluffing at the right times is important. So is recognizing that an opponent is likely to be bluffing and acting accordingly. Balancing your own bluffs and adjusting opponent calling ranges is essential.

Your Bluffing score of 123 is not significantly different from your average score. This score is better than 93.74% of all persons taking this test.

Flop Texture
Adjusting your play based on the "texture" of the flop is important. The flop cards should be analyzed in light of your opponent's tendencies, his suspected hand range, and the strength of your own hand. Failing to include the flop texture in your post flop decision making is a typical beginner mistake and is easily disastrous. As you gain experience in NL Hold"em and play against more experienced opponents, it will become second nature and of paramount importance.

Your Flop Texture score of 130 is exceptionally higher than your average score. This score is better than 97.72% of all persons taking this test.

Pot Odds
Sometimes you are required to call when you know you're losing because the price is right. Sometimes you must fold because you're facing a bet that is too big or because an opponent does not have enough money behind to justify an implied odds call. Failing to make the correct odds calls is a major error. Sometimes it is correct to call in some surprising situations.

Your Pot Odds score of 121 is not significantly different from your average score. This score is better than 91.92% of all persons taking this test.

Logic
Logically analyzing the action during a hand is important. Players with strong logical ability are quicker to see where a given set of conditions is leading, better understand the technical aspects of the game, often move up quickly in stakes and have little trouble with bankroll management.

Your Logic score of 132 is exceptionally higher than your average score. This score is better than 98.36% of all persons taking this test.

Betting Patterns
An awareness of betting patterns serves a number of purposes. It is useful for analyzing the playing styles of opponents and for finding errors in your own game. Often beginning players have no awareness of common betting patterns. Experienced players are sometimes able to watch a hand, adjust for the skill, experience and tendencies of each player and determine almost exactly what each player holds.

Your Betting Patterns score of 136 is exceptionally higher than your average score. This score is better than 99.18% of all persons taking this test.

Hand Selection
It is important choose which hands to play by adjusting for position, stack sizes, and the tendencies of your opponents. Beginners often have no awareness of relative hand strength, often play weak hands out of position, or easily dominated hands against tight opponents.

Your Hand selection score of 120 is not significantly different from your average score. This score is better than 90.88% of all persons taking this test.

Aggression
Aggression is important in poker. It increases your equity in most hands by giving you an extra way to win the pot. Your opponent may fold. Playing passively yields only one way to win -- with the best hand at showdown. Beginners typically play too loose and too passive. Excessively aggressive players will lose less than passive players. A balanced tight aggressive strategy is typically best for NL Hold"em depending on game conditions and stack sizes. Loose aggressive style is more difficult to master but can often be extremely profitable.

Your Aggression score of 128 is not significantly different from your average score. This score is better than 96.90% of all persons taking this test.

Computational Speed
Solving problems quickly indicates a combination of experience and card sense. Experienced players can often play most hands automatically, and only require significant thought for the most complex situations. Experienced players should easily answer a good amount of the questions on this test, leaving extra time to focus on the more complex situations.

Your Computational Speed score of 83 is significantly lower than your average score. This score is better than 12.85% of all persons taking this test.


Addendum, October 21, 2007

I am delighted to report that the owner/author of the Donkey Test read this entry (I doubt he's a regular reader; I assume he has some sort of automatic notification system in place for when people link to and/or comment on the test) and asked about the errors I noted. I dashed off a quick list of 30 or so of them, and he has already made nearly all of the edits I suggested. It's a rare pleasure these days to find somebody who cares about getting such things right, when they are pointed out. The Grump's hat is tipped to him.

For poker rules nerds only

Yeah, I'm one of them. I think it's fun reading poker rule books and figuring out ways that the rules could be worded better, or situations that the rules don't cover. I'm a poker rules nerd.

While reading an online discussion forum, I came across a link I already like a lot: http://www.thehendonmob.com/tournament_director/articles/introduction.html It's a series of situations--some real, some hypothetical--posed to six prominent poker tournament directors, and the discussions that ensue among them about how they would apply the rules. They don't always agree, and the different viewpoints and arguments is what makes this series interesting and thought-provoking--if you like that sort of thing, that is. I realize that I'm in a minority, but I love this kind of stuff. I feel like a pig that has just sniffed out a truffle.